Pax Christi International Delegation to the Holy Land | November 2025

Report on the Arab Educational Institute – Pax Christi Bethlehem

Written by the Pax Christi International Delegation to the Holy Land | November 2025

We returned to the Arab Educational Institute – Pax Christi Bethlehem (AEI) at a time when life in the West Bank feels narrowed, heavy, and increasingly fragile. Founded in 1986 and affiliated with Pax Christi International, AEI has for nearly forty years been a place where women, children, and young people gather to learn, reflect, and tell their stories. Importantly, AEI works with both Christian and Muslim families, creating shared spaces where communities divided by politics and pressure can meet as equals. Its work has always been rooted in sumud, not understood as heroism, but as the daily, disciplined choice to remain present, human, and nonviolent under occupation.

Over many return visits, we have listened as people described how conditions have worsened, but this time the atmosphere felt different. There was a depth of exhaustion and fear that seemed to have settled into everyday life. The stories we heard were the most distressing we have ever encountered, not because they were dramatic, but because of how ordinary they had become.

We met again at the SUMUD Story House, AEI’s community space just a few minutes’ walk from Checkpoint 300, the main pedestrian crossing on the road between Bethlehem and Jerusalem. Checkpoint 300, also known as the Bethlehem or Gilo checkpoint, has stood in that place since the 1990s as part of the West Bank barrier and is one of the few crossings where people holding Palestinian Authority ID cards with valid permits can enter East Jerusalem or Israel. By 2025, however, entry requirements had tightened even further. Only children under 12, women over 50, and men over 55 are routinely permitted to cross, while many others are simply turned back. Both pedestrian and vehicular access operate entirely at the discretion of Israeli security staff, and its operation is marked by unpredictable closures, biometric checks, and long waiting times that can stretch from forty minutes to several hours.

Inside AEI, staff and participants spoke quietly but openly about how this narrowing of movement has reshaped daily life. The violence seen on screens in Gaza has seeped deeply into the West Bank. Armed settlers and the military move with confidence and apparent impunity. Incursions now take place day and night across the West Bank, including in Bethlehem itself. Sleep is light and easily broken. People listen for the sound of military vehicles, waiting to hear where they will stop, which street they will enter, which home will be forced open. There is a sense that even the buildings hold their breath, and that the silence afterwards is almost as heavy as the noise.

In this context, AEI continues its work with quiet determination. Children between the ages of six and thirteen come regularly to take part in indoor and outdoor activities that offer moments of safety, play, and creative expression. These programmes are designed to allow children to experience something close to normal childhood, even as disruption presses in on all sides. AEI also works with partner organisations to organise educational trips, including visits to historical and cultural sites, helping children remain connected to their heritage in a reality where freedom of movement is increasingly rare.During the summer holidays, AEI’s summer school offers children a rare and vital escape. Through play, creativity, and shared activities, it gives them a sense of safety and joy, allowing them, even briefly, to experience freedom and simply be children.

For women, AEI remains a place where stories can be spoken and held. Christian and Muslim women meet together regularly, sitting together, sharing tea, and unfolding what life has become in a way that resists both silence and despair. Storytelling is central, not as therapy alone, but as a way of naming experience and reclaiming agency. Christian and Muslim women read, share, and discuss Christian and Muslim religious texts, and they share Christian and Muslim prayers together. Women spoke of how quickly an ordinary journey can become frightening, of how calm and restraint have become skills learnt through repetition rather than choice. Others reflected on how homes no longer feel entirely private, and how every gesture must be weighed against the risk of escalation. These stories emerged slowly, woven with humour, fatigue, clarity, and an unspoken understanding of what is left unsaid.

AEI’s educational approach often begins with shared reflection. Through a programme known as Read, Reflect, Communicate and React, participants read passages from religious texts, reflect on their meaning together, and respond through creative expression or action. These reflections include both Christian and Muslim religious texts. Faith and lived experience are brought into conversation, not to escape reality, but to face it honestly. Workshops on historical memory, particularly the Nakba, invite reflection on displacement and loss, often through simple symbolic acts such as holding a key, gestures that carry both grief and continuity.

During the World Week for Just Peace, organised by the World Council of Churches, AEI facilitates public actions that combine prayer, readings, and song in the open areas near the wall. These gatherings are carefully placed, not too close to the barrier, shaped by the need for safety, yet visible enough to be seen. They are embodied acts of nonviolent resistance, grounded in faith and presence rather than confrontation.

Again and again, conversations returned to the changing meaning of sumud. What once felt collective and sustaining now feels fragile, stretched thin by years of pressure. Many spoke of working simply to survive, with little space left for imagining a future. There was also a deep weariness with words, with statements that lead nowhere. What was expressed was not despair, but an insistence on honesty and on the need for action.  

They spoke about the broader impact of the occupation: “We don’t have the sumud of the past. The feeling has changed. I look for the future in another way. Palestine is not safe. I can survive, but my children and grandchildren… I feel sorry when I look at them. Children abroad are free to do everything, but they know if they come back, they are not free anymore. […] We need to be real. In the past we were wearing masks to protect our children. Now we see the truth and we are very tired of words. We need action.”

Young people, in particular, struggle to imagine a future for themselves. AEI works closely with youth who live with uncertainty, limited opportunity, and widespread unemployment. Some take part in international exposure programmes, including short educational visits to Europe, which offer new perspectives and skills, but also sharpen the painful awareness that many believe safety and dignity may only be possible elsewhere.

And yet, in the midst of all this, Palestinian warmth and hospitality remain unwavering. We were welcomed, as always, with a generous meal prepared by the women themselves. We ate together, shared memories of earlier visits, and spoke of people and places that link past and present. These moments of ordinary kindness felt quietly radical.

There was deep concern about the future of Christian life in Bethlehem and the wider West Bank. Palestinians have long insisted on the importance of Christian families remaining rooted in the land as a living presence of history and faith. This commitment has come at immense cost. Under current conditions of extreme violence, expanding annexation, and near-total economic collapse, many families are leaving. Around 200 Palestinian Christian families have left Bethlehem, and approximately 4,600 Christians have left the West Bank. Teachers and municipal workers often go unpaid, as Israel withholds tax revenues from the Palestinian Authority. Bethlehem feels emptied; shops, cafés, and hotels stand closed, and the absence of visitors is stark.

Environmental pressures deepen the crisis. This year’s olive harvest was devastated by drought. Combined with settler violence and theft, many families chose not to harvest at all, as the effort and risk outweighed any return. Even reaching olive presses has become difficult, if not impossible, for many.

Along the Separation Wall itself, near Aida Refugee Camp and Checkpoint 300, AEI’s work takes visible form in what has become known as the Wall Museum. The Wall Museum stands in an area that was once among the liveliest in Bethlehem. Hebron Road, passing by Rachel’s Tomb, sacred to Muslims, Christians, and Jews, was the city’s main gateway. Shops, workshops, and cafés lined the street, and life moved freely through it.

That life was steadily erased. During the 1990s, the area became a military zone, and after the second Intifada the Separation Wall was built around Rachel’s Tomb, annexed to Jerusalem. Today, the street is quiet, almost empty. What had once been a place of movement and encounter is now dominated by the Wall and checkpoints, symbols of confinement and restriction.

In response, the Arab Educational Institute opened the Sumud Story House in 2009, creating a space for women and neighbours to gather, reflect, and reclaim public presence through cultural acts. From this grew concerts, inter-religious prayers, festivals, and performances held in the shadow of the Wall itself. The Wall Museum emerged from these efforts. Its name is deliberately in inverted commas: it is not meant to be permanent, but to challenge the Wall’s permanence. 

Between 2011 and 2013, 270 stories were displayed, speaking of loss, resilience, and the longing for home, rejecting the silence imposed by occupation and reclaiming Palestinian narrative. Among them are two posters, in English and Arabic, marking the Pax Christi International Global Gathering of 2015, connecting local stories to international solidarity.

Today, many of the panels are faded, damaged, or partially torn, reflecting the harshness of the environment. Yet they continue to speak. Reading the stories along the Wall remains a powerful act of witness, and for many, a quiet pilgrimage, a reminder of endurance and hope in a landscape shaped by confinement and restriction. These stories of humanity stand in contrast to the concrete presence of this Wall. While the Wall is built to divide, control, and endure, the Museum attached to it was never imagined as permanent. In the Palestinian understanding, the Wall Museum exists only for as long as the Wall itself stands. It is meant to fall together with it, one day. 

In the midst of fear, exhaustion, and uncertainty, the Arab Educational Institute continues to hold space for truth, memory, and dignity. Through education, storytelling, reflection, and nonviolent engagement, AEI remains a place where people are seen and heard, and where humanity is quietly defended, even as the weight of occupation grows heavier with each passing day.

If you wish to support the activities of the Arab Educational Institute – Pax Christi Bethlehem, find more here: https://aeicenter.org/donate/